Women should have right to decide

In the waning hours of the Rhode Island General Assembly, the leadership moved to quickly push through legislation creating a “Choose Life” license plate.

There is a multi-pronged assault against women that is imperiling abortion rights, birth control, sex education and women’s lives. Nearly every week new laws are proposed and enacted that will concretely close clinics. And it is delusional to think that what is being done to women in Texas, North Carolina, Ohio, North Dakota, Mississippi and beyond won’t make it to the coasts and major cities if this trajectory is not reversed.

Ninety-seven percent of rural counties have no abortion providers, and clinics keep closing. Courageous doctors are hunted, stalked, terrorized and threatened by religious, women-hating fanatics. For too long, activists have been relying upon politicians, instead of themselves, as yesterday’s outrages become today’s compromises.

It is no accident that abortion rights are so divisive. How one thinks and feels about abortion fundamentally reflects how one feels about women. This fight is not about babies, it seeks to control and reduce women to childbearing chattel. Not a single major anti-abortion organization supports birth control.

Forcing women to have children they don’t want traps them in abusive relationships, drives them into poverty, forces them from school and extinguishes their dreams. For women to function fully as human beings, they need un-stigmatized access to birth control and abortion, and need to decide for themselves when or if they should have children.

Forced motherhood is female enslavement, and opposed to the interests of humanity.

Comments

A "Choose Life" license plate is the moral equivalent of "forced motherhood...female enslavement..."? A license plate? Really? If those who oppose this barbaric procedure are so invested in reducing women to "childbearing chattel", why are most pro-life leaders women? Suggestion: Let's allow women to CHOOSE whether they want a Choose Life license plate.

John, what a bunch of hyperbolic crap! Being against abortion does not mean being against women. It is being for the unborn baby. There is no war on women. In fact, there is no reason for any woman to get pregnant in this day and age. No one is forcing them to keep the baby. And talk about courageous doctors? What is courageous about ripping a baby's spinal cord in half? Courageous? I think not.